June 27, 2025

Hanna Belinska, Amani Hassan, Ada Inselbaggil, Ananya Rathore, Jack Simoes, Sehajleen Kaur Wander

Introduction

Museums as colonial institutions have increasingly become sites of critical reflection and transformation. Across North America and Europe, places which birthed museums from and for their colonial projects, these institutions are undertaking significant efforts to decolonize and diversify historical storytelling by incorporating multiple voices that have been historically marginalized. Toronto joined this broader movement to decolonize its museums and launched its 2020–2022 Strategic Plan, which foregrounds equity, inclusivity, and decolonial practices. The plan calls on all ten of their history museums to diversify their stories and celebrate Toronto’s multicultural heritage. In response to the Action Plan, Spadina Museum has recontextualized historical narratives and introduced new exhibits that uncover hidden, marginalized histories.

Our research aimed to learn about how the museum’s transformational efforts were encountered, negotiated, and understood by their audiences. Currently, Spadina Museum provides free guided tours which cover all four floors, from the basement to the unrenovated third floor. It also features a large garden, freely accessible to the public, where members of Indigenous communities grow produce that is later donated to charities. Two key transformations examined throughout the course of our fieldwork were Mrs. Louisa Pipkin’s portraits and Pride Month tours.

This report presents the findings of an ethnographic study conducted during these tours by a team of anthropology students from the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the City of Toronto, between May 22 and June 16, 2025. The research team, consisting of Hanna Belinska, Amani Hassan, Ada Inselbaggil, Ananya Rathore, Jack Simoes, and Sehajleen Kaur Wander, engaged in participant observation and ethnographic interviews. These methods were chosen for their particular strength in exploring both how museums engage with decolonization efforts as well as how visitors perceive and interact with such efforts. Through centering the visitor and their unique perspective, our research investigated how visitors experienced these decolonial transformations of Spadina Museum to offer critical insight into how museum transformations in storytelling and material design were recognized and interpreted by their audiences.

Our findings reveal that visitor experiences are shaped by a complex interplay of material objects, storytelling strategies, and individual backgrounds. Visitors’ understandings of decolonial and inclusive exhibits are mediated by their own histories, interests, and positionalities, as well as by how these narratives are (or are not) integrated into their broader knowledge of Toronto’s history. From interviews, three broad, fluid categories of visitors emerged: (1) immigrants and Canadian tourists exploring the city; (2) history enthusiasts passionate about the historical immersion provided by historic homes; and (3) people with specific formational backgrounds through education, profession, or culture related to the themes presented in the house and tours.

Toronto History Museums Transformation

The Toronto History Museums’ Strategic Action Plan, 2020–2022, enacts “transformative change” to reimagine museums as dynamic civic institutions rather than status repositories of colonial memory (Toronto History Museums 2020). At the heart of this strategic vision is the understanding that museums serve as unique spaces that encourage tourists to rethink dominant narratives while provoking meaningful public dialogue about themes such as class, gender, queer histories, and colonial legacies. The Strategic Plan sets forth six goals for the transformation of Toronto History Museums: (1) decolonise by foregrounding Indigenous voices and perspectives; (2) transform into inclusive community spaces not just to learn about the past, but also to foster creativity, dialogue, and community-building; (3) present stories from diverse perspectives and tell stories outside of dominant narratives; (4) ensure equitable access to services and a sustainable financial future; (5) promote Sustainable Development Goals such as on poverty, conservation, and sustainability; and (6) celebrate Toronto’s cultural heritage (Toronto History Museums 2020).

Transformations at Spadina

In the same vein as the 2022–2023 Dis/Mantle exhibition, Spadina Museum honored Pride Month with recontextualized narratives of Torontonian history. They introduced a Michelle DuBarry exhibition as well as a revitalized tour that illustrates queer life in Toronto during the early twentieth century (City of Toronto 2025). The museum spotlighted her story, dresses, and jewelry to demonstrate the rich origins of the city’s queer groups and populations (City of Toronto 2025). DuBarry had been one of Canada’s oldest drag queens, active since the 1960s, and even rose to the rank of Empress in the Imperial Court, a community organization for queer people. She also became a major donor to charity for issues such as HIV/AIDS awareness. For the new tours, Toronto History Museums’ social media and websites further help us grasp the museum’s position. On Facebook, their account introduces Spadina Museum as a site for those “curious about Queer Toronto history” (Toronto History Museums 2025). The Pride Month tours are “enriched” with queer histories to show different histories and cultures that had been concealed. Examples include the story of the Dumbells, a Canadian singing group in World War I, and a plaque in the Video Room of Robbie Baldwin Ross, great-grandson of Robert Baldwin, the first owner of this property. It describes how he had been openly gay and in a relationship with Oscar Wilde. By doing so, Spadina Museum emphasizes collaboration with the Queer Archives of Toronto as well as with DuBarry’s friends in curating these exhibits.

Broader Trends in Museum Transformations

Spadina’s recent initiatives reflect a broader North American and European movement toward decolonizing museums. In their overview of evolving discourses and practices in the field, Wali and Collins (2023) trace how museum scholarship and curatorial work have shifted from simply acknowledging museums’ entanglement in colonialism to seeking practical strategies to repair harm and reimagine institutional futures. Scholarly views on the possibility of museum decolonization vary widely. Some argue that museums cannot be truly decolonized given their inherent colonial nature and embeddedness into neocolonial institutional power structures (Boast 2011; Lonetree 2012). Others adopt a more hopeful perspective, emphasizing museums’ growing role as platforms for public dialogue, collaboration with source communities, and pointing to emerging examples of successful decolonial practices taking root (Clifford 1997; Butler 2018; Macdonald 2022).

Like Spadina and other museums in Toronto, museums in Europe and North America are beginning to reconfigure themselves as contact zones, actively disrupting their hegemonic discourses and pedagogies and making space for marginalized perspectives. As Brandie Macdonald (2022, 11) notes, “decolonial praxis is not a one-size-fits-all linear model,” and institutions experiment with multiple context-specific methods of decolonizing their storytelling. Still, some common strategies have emerged. Butler (2018) highlights another common feature of this evolving field: its reliance on aesthetics and creativity. She emphasizes that unsettling dominant historical narratives, introducing non-linear historicity, and conflicting epistemologies require creative engagement. As part of that critique, John Urry (2002) had cautioned that even when objects on display are “authentic,” a single, straight-forward reconstruction of history is impossible, and a certain degree of interpretation is inevitable. He conceptualizes this interpretative aspect as the “tourist gaze:” a socially constructed way of looking at historic sites, shaped by media and often directed toward what is culturally seen as the extraordinary (Urry 2002, 2).

According to Urry (2022), visitors perceive heritage sites not only as a real-time experience: objects also often evoke personal memories and associations, which frame their perception of the past. Recognizing the false neutrality of heritage sites becomes increasingly important as interest in heritage continues to grow (Urry 2002). Both Urry (2002) and Butler (2018) attribute this rising interest to a growing awareness by people of their position within history, as well as to ongoing changes in social norms, technology, and economic conditions, which prompt more interest in the past.

Watson, Barnes, and Bunning (2019) similarly emphasize the unique and exciting sense of connecting to the past experienced by visitors at heritage sites, stressing that encounters extend beyond solely cognitive and become embodied and emotional. These profound experiences should be designed not to simplify the past, but to foster historical consciousness: encourage visitors to “read against the grain” and search for silences in historical records, contradictions, and exclusions (Watson, Barnes and Bunning 2019, 105). This becomes particularly important when engaging with, or ignoring, the themes that have historically been marginalized, such as gender, race, and sexuality. Many house museums are still structured around a “cult of domesticity” that reinforces narrow ideals of white middle-class femininity (Christensen 2011, 155). Queer narratives are often treated as supplemental rather than centered to disrupt and reanimate traditional historical storytelling (Bennett 2020). Instead, the authors argue, house museums should tell stories that reveal how these living spaces were shaped by inequality, silence, and at times, quiet acts of rebellion (Christensen 2011; Bennett 2020; Potter 2022).

Summary of Fieldwork Findings

Touring Spadina: Curated Narratives

Most of the tours followed a similar structure. Beginning on May 29, the museum introduced queer histories for Pride Month. Most of our fieldwork data was collected during these tours. The central story of the queer-themed exhibit focused on Toronto’s prominent drag queen, Michelle DuBarry, born Russel Alldread. Michelle’s archival artifacts, such as gowns and awards, were primarily displayed on the museum’s ground floor. Besides DuBarry’s theme, the exhibit also included archival photos of Toronto’s historic gay spots and printouts from queer publications. In each room, historical interpreters first discussed the room itself and the Austin family before shifting focus to queer history, highlighting Michelle’s gowns and sharing stories about Toronto’s broader queer communities.

All tours began in Spadina’s basement Orientation Room, where a brief introductory video about Spadina’s history is usually shown before the guide starts the tour. However, during Pride, this step was skipped. Instead, while visitors waited, reels of Michelle DuBarry’s performances were played on loop. Two easels with large printed statements are placed beside the TV screen: one displays a Land Acknowledgement, a standard practice for Canadian institutions, and the other is an African Ancestral Acknowledgement, which speaks about the involuntary displacement of Black individuals to North America. This is a rare feature for museums in Toronto, as we were told by one of the Spadina workers. However, most tour guides did not refer to these acknowledgements directly during the tours. The actual tour started with the guide explaining the origins of the name Spadina — in Anishinaabemowin, it means “going up the hill” — and the museum’s conscious choice to use the Indigenous pronunciation “Spadeena.” Later, during interviews, we noticed that most respondents adopted this pronunciation too. After a brief discussion of James Austin, his immigration journey from Ireland to Toronto, and his descendants, the guide would invite the group to proceed to the ground floor and enter the main hallway.

The main object introduced in the hallway was the two portraits of Mrs. Pipkin. The guides would introduce Mrs. Pipkin’s story and her journey as a freedom seeker from the United States to Canada. While most visitors usually do not have questions, a notable exception was a man who asked a clarifying question about whether Mrs. Pipkin had been a maid. The tour guide, responded that Mrs. Pipkin was employed as a laundress, a role that was not considered part of the house servant staff at the time. She further explained that female servants usually lived in the servants’ quarters, initially in the basement and then on the third floor when it was added, whereas Mrs. Pipkin did not live in the house and only came inside to do laundry. Additionally, guides often pointed out that the entrance used by visitors on tours was historically the servants’ entrance, while the Austins and their guests would have entered through the grand front door leading to the hallway.

The group would then proceed to the Reception Room, a lavishly decorated space where Mary Austin received her guests. A key feature highlighted by guides was the red silk wallpaper, shipped from China—luxury at the time. This detail was used to demonstrate conspicuous identity performance at the time and served as a segue into discussions about Michelle DuBarry’s costume, an elegant burgundy outfit that matched the room’s colour and style. Here, most guides explained who Michelle was and shared her life story and achievements, including her awards for charity work in the fight against AIDS. On one tour, a woman interrupted the explanation of the DuBarry exhibit to ask, “Why are we talking about this?” The guide calmly explained the duty to tell hidden stories as historians and historical knowledge producers. Here is when guides would introduce the Gross Indecency Laws of the time that essentially criminalized sexual acts, and in practice punished all other aspects of queer life, too.

In the Drawing Room, the guide often invited visitors to imagine a grand party, with luxurious wheeled seating pushed aside to provide space for the hundreds of Austin’s guests. Here, four more of Michelle DuBarry’s dresses were displayed, with guides discussing some of them, such as the gown she wore to the wedding of her friends, Mitchell and Cameron, who kindly loaned many of Michelle’s pieces to the museum. An extension of the Drawing Room, added later by Albert Austin, the bright Palm Room houses his collection of exotic plants. The central story of the room focused on the family gardener who took care of all the plants on the property but was only allowed to enter the Palm Room through the trap in the floor that led to the basement and then outside. Here, guides often engaged visitors by inviting them to look around and guess how the gardener accessed the space, prompting emotional reactions when the hidden entrance was discovered.

The visitors proceeded towards the dining room, off to the other side of the entrance. A curtain hid and muffled the kitchen. The dining table had five place settings for six seats; the central story of this room was the “table of knowledge.” It represented the fact that historians can only access the histories that have been told, and the visitors nodded, solemn. Those who were unable to write their stories were inadvertently excluded from history books, and so they were not allowed a seat at the table. Without a sixth place setting, one would never know a person occupied that seat.

Three visitors across three separate tours inquired about the heavy cast iron container, the size of a cello, on Mary’s side table. It was a Turkish-origin incense holder bought on one of the family’s tours of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the rugs here, the historical interpreter added, are from Egypt and Persia. The colonial and financial implications of the family’s “Middle Eastern tours” were not missed, as seen through the interviews in section 2.b.

Entering Mary’s bedroom, we were invited to read the magazines spread on sofas and tables that discussed (many in disparaging ways) queer life. Through these objects, the historical interpreter mentioned the Gross Indecency Laws that imposed darkness on queer life at the time. A few visitors seemed engrossed by these magazines, especially the “report” on a couple suspected of a “magical sex change” that was based on degrading assumptions of “non-sexers” (an antiquated term for non-binary people).

Finally, we headed further up the servants’ stairs to the third floor. Left unfinished and later unrestored, it had been built to isolate Mary and Albert’s second son, Bertie, when he contracted tuberculosis. They would claim it was pneumonia, as tuberculosis was considered a “poor man’s disease” and pneumonia more “dainty and mindful,” to which visitors laughed. In the Pink Room, the guide held up a photo of most other Torontonians’ method of isolation: sick tents outside homes. However, the other half of the third floor functioned as the servants’ quarters. And, of course, all the live-in servants were women, expected to never marry or have children.

Thus concluded the tour. Most of the guides did not specifically mention that the museum was attempting to diversify its storytelling. Rather, they used tangible objects or photos of less privileged people, such as Torontonians living in poor districts like the Ward, to deliver the message. Personal anecdotes about class performance, especially delivered sarcastically, evoked positive reactions from many — laughter, smiles, scoffs. Still, most visitors during tours could be described as silent observers. In several instances, visitors did not ask any questions despite the guides encouraging them to do so. A majority of questions concerned the materiality of class performance, indicating how material objects, in tandem with stories, seemed to affect the visitors emotionally.

Ethnographic Interviews: A Glimpse into Spadina’s Visitors

Backgrounds and Interests

Experiences at Spadina House are shaped by a complex interplay of objects, stories, visitors’ interests and histories, as well as their expectations from the museum. From our fieldwork emerged three fluid categories of visitors to the site: tourists or immigrants exploring the city; history lovers interested in historic houses; and those with specific interests or backgrounds related to aspects of the house. These encounters and negotiations are expressed through the themes of class, gender, Pride, and colonial legacies.

The first group of visitors we outline consists of tourists to Toronto exploring the city, immigrants, as well as Canadians not from Toronto. Their expectations revolved around a desire to contextualize the site’s relation to Toronto and fill in gaps of their nascent knowledge of Canadian history. A common thread among interviews with such visitors was comments about needing more context. Denise, a Chilean woman studying anthropology in Germany, expressed interest in the Indigenous histories of the site that were hinted at in the tour’s introduction. Likewise, Australian tourists Alana and Jack wanted diverse stories of the city itself, not just of Spadina, in order to better understand the tour. Meanwhile, other tourists saw the museum as testimony to the aspirational multiculturalism for which Canada is famous worldwide. Louise’s parents were immigrants to Ottawa from France, and she remarked how James Austin “worked up into the business to be able to afford something like [this house].” She emphasized how he “came from nothing,” demonstrating for her that his story was “very much like the American Dream, but the Canadian version. So, the Canadian Dream.” European tourist, Nellie, suggested the same when she said,

It was always mentioned that Toronto is a multicultural city, that there are a lot of immigrants that came to Toronto, that they made the city, and it’s a community. I see it in this museum, too, that this family, Austin, Baldwin families, they came from Ireland, they immigrated to Canada […] to make a better life. And this sense of immigration is something that belongs to the history of Toronto.

Linh, a young Vietnamese woman who had recently moved to Toronto from Ottawa considered DuBarry’s drag and charity work to compare the implications of class in Canada with those of Vietnam, “ I feel like in Canada people do that a lot, compared to my country, because it feels like back in time people weren’t rich enough, or they would have enough money to donate to other people.” Linh’s comment shows how tourists and newcomers hoping to contextualize their understanding of Toronto and Canadian history often make connections between the museum’s historical narrative of Toronto with their own cultural backgrounds.

The second group of visitors we identify are historic mansion and history enthusiasts, many of whom are drawn to Spadina Museum for its capacity to evoke the material and social life of the past. Their expectations revolve around immersion, with particular attention devoted towards observing “how people used to live,” and comparing Spadina with other heritage sites they have experienced in Toronto. These visitors’ interpretations are shaped by personal memories, professional training and a desire for a meaningful connection with historical experiences. A shared feature among these visitors is a driven focus towards specific objects, architectural intricacies and technological features of the house. Clara, a retired interior designer, was particularly sensitive to the historical aesthetics of each room and the ways in which light, colour and material shaped the space. She commented on the “dark wallpaper, dark carpets, dark trim, dark furniture,” noting how the contrast between the formal areas and lighter family spaces provided her with an insight into domestic class hierarchy in the past. Likewise, Jane and Nigel, both from Toronto, regularly visit historic houses across the city and use each one as a lens into different aspects of life and labour. For Nigel, the amount of authentic material made a lasting impression, as displayed by his acknowledgement of the “shocking amount of original stuff here.” What distinguished Spadina for them was its willingness to tell a fuller, more complex story of the past through material evidence such as the “wallpaper coming off the walls (upstairs).” Olivia, a retired lawyer from Toronto and Ben, a retired engineer from Connecticut were drawn to the museum due to their long-standing passion for history within domestic, architectural and social dimensions. Ben was especially drawn to the home’s infrastructure, paying close attention to its old-time radiators, lighting fixtures and heating systems.

The final general category of visitors consisted of those who came to Spadina casually, but who, during interviews, revealed that their unique interests and areas of expertise deeply shaped how they engaged with the tour. One visitor, a fashion designer from London residing in Etobicoke, was focused on the house’s interior design elements such as the beds, the floors, and the prints on the walls. Another, a graduate student in an archival management program, was particularly interested in how oral histories about Spadina’s servants were collected. Another pair of visitors, Natalie and Charlotte, both Toronto residents with social work backgrounds, paid close attention to how social class were represented in the house layout and the guide’s stories. Natalie reflected, “Because we both have a background in sociology and social work, community work. We’ve been taught to analyse these differences in social status and to understand these pieces. That’s just how we view things.”

Additionally, in the final week of fieldwork, we had the opportunity to speak with Mitchell and Cameron, close friends of Michelle DuBarry, who visited Spadina specifically to see the Pride Month exhibition. They had personally donated several of Michelle’s dresses and were eager to see how they had been displayed. “We found out about the Museum on Facebook through someone posting,” Mitchell explained. “We found out that there was an exhibit here. So, we rushed down to see it. It was like, woah.” Cameron added, “This is the stuff that we gave the museum, a year ago.” Their personal connection to Michelle gave them a unique lens through which to evaluate the exhibit. Still, they approached the museum without expectations, “We came down here with no expectations, not knowing what to expect,” Cameron reflected, “And I think the museum delivered.” These diverse lenses shaped how visitors interpreted and connected with Spadina’s stories, often in unexpected and non-linear ways.

Identity Meets History: Visitor Reception of Museum Efforts and Reflective Meaning-Making

Dual Perceptions of Class Disparities

Class was the most apparent theme picked up on by visitors due to its tangibility in the design and objects of Spadina House. Through interaction with the space, people recognized— and often outwardly reacted to—the ostentatiousness of the family, and equally, the marginalized position of servants in Toronto. The radio, shaving foam heater, fridge, early plumbing, intricate cast iron radiator covers, wallpaper, billiard table, taxidermy, and sitz were distinguished for the privilege they afforded. Reactions ranged from disdain and amusement for the excessiveness, to awe and inspiration for the family earning such grandeur.

Two siblings reveal the nuances of how visitors experienced class at Spadina. Callie is a 22-year-old woman born and raised in Ottawa and studying for a Master’s degree in industrial relations in the UK. While visiting her brother, Chris, in Toronto, they went to the Spadina Museum because they both love history. Chris had been a historical interpreter himself for a small historic home in Ottawa. He draws frequent comparisons between the immensity of wealth and luxury at Spadina (or Toronto’s elite more broadly), and the relatively modest elite of Ottawa. For example, the cast iron radiator cover in the entrance hall stood out to him because it was so “Toronto-specific. Something that you could only get in a highly urbanized environment, with all the trade going to Europe.” Their vision of Toronto as a uniquely cosmopolitan Canadian city emerged through this sharp contrast with their hometown. Chris was struck by these objects, because “there’s something about the idea of a European, Middle Eastern grand tour [that is] so classically European wealthy.” His perspective of “Torontonian” identity was influenced by the costly foreign decor of the museum, yes, but his broader interpretation of their significance and relation to the city as a whole was informed by his background as a non-Torontonian, and by his previous knowledge and memories working at an Ottawan historical house museum.

Class is also the primary lens through which visitors were impacted by Mrs. Pipkin’s story. Participants did not bring her up on their own, other than to express general appreciation for her story. She was perceived less from a liberatory, decolonizing lens of the racial dynamics of exploitation, and more through the lens of the class dynamics of exploitation. Nevertheless, exceptional cases revealed the influence of visitors’ specific interests. Charlotte, educated as a social service worker and whose family loved history, was a woman from Toronto visiting Spadina Museum with her fiancée as a potential wedding venue. Unprompted, Charlotte took notice of the portrait. Still, she viewed the portrait as a discussion of class, as opposed to race or decolonialism. Her gaze was a direct result of her educational background:

It makes a big difference, before… before going through college. For a social service worker. I would have still noticed a lot of the same things. But, the interpersonal relationships, and the power dynamics, and how they influence… Honestly, the portrait of [Mrs. Pipkin] was a real acknowledgement. That yes, we hear a lot about the family, but they would not have lived that way without all of the support staff underneath them.

Charlotte’s use of the word “acknowledgement” suggests a recognition of the injustices attached to labour. She was prompted into reflection on the presence of imbalanced relationships of power embedded in histories of wealthy families. While not in the decolonial direction intended by the Museum, the story of Mrs. Pipkin still successfully complicated people’s understandings of history by diversifying the stories told.

Gendered Roles and Performances in the Past and Present

As illustrated by the excerpts above, the performance of wealth was perceived by visitors alongside the performance of gender. Georgia, a young George Brown student, argued that the various gendered objects, architecture, and stories in the house “demonstrates that the idea of masculinity and femininity is the idea of performance.” In ways detailed below, participants made connections between gender norms depicted in the historical museum to those of their present, which created different emotional attachments to particular features of the house.

Through comparing Georgia, Linh, and Luke’s experiences of the Billiards’ Room, we find that both women viewed Albert’s articulations of his masculinity as subversive and ironic, whereas Luke did not.

A revealing case was Georgia, who loved the Billiards Room because she interpreted the displays of masculinity as a subversion of nature’s feminine connotations. As she put it,”[N]ature is usually connected to women and femininity, but then having it be the man’s room, [and] it was a green room. […] with all the different dead birds lined up against the wall, and the taxidermy of it. But also ordering the taxidermy, and not having hunted it himself, I thought was really interesting.” To her, “masculine” objects like the taxidermy, trophy, and billiards table clashed ironically with “feminine” imagery like the nature frieze, plants, green wallpaper, and animal motifs. These aspects of Albert’s “mancave” were understood by this visitor to contradict modern understandings of masculine expression. Essentially, Georgia understood the room to portray gender as fundamentally about performance, and the futility of gender binaries and pigeonholes.

This sense of irony was also detected by another woman, Linh, who perceived material juxtapositions in the museum space to create a sense of irony in the Billiards’ Room. When she acknowledgement of Bobbie Rosenfeld’s trophy, displayed alongside Albert’s golf trophy, brought the object’s materiality and performativity into focus, “It was that room where they have the trophy and the photo of [Rosenfeld] after she [won], I think she [won] the golden one and the silver one as well, and that you mention is the men[‘s] room and they have the trophy the woman won, so that’s really interesting.” Linh seems to be pointing out the irony of displaying a female athlete’s hard-earned trophy in what is otherwise the most conspicuously masculine room in the house. While she does not specifically mention Albert’s trophy for placing second-last, she still grasps the additional layer of meanings created by contrasting Bobbie’s story and Albert’s space. Linh is intrigued by the curatorial choice of this non-linear storytelling and by how Bobbie’s achievements disrupt the room’s traditional performance of masculinity, celebrated according to the social norms at the time. This retrospective disruption challenges and complicates Linh’s understanding of historical gender norms.

Yet, the same trophy stood out to a male visitor for its positive reinforcement of masculine ideals around sports and physical competition, overlooking any ironic or subversive aspect. Luke, a man in his 30s from Toronto, loved the Billiard’s Room, as well, because of the billiard table and golf trophy. When pressed to elaborate on why, he simply answered, “Because I’m a guy.” The room was perceived as an ode to masculine leisure activities, i.e. ideals and performances. The taxidermy, plants, billiards table, and golf trophy, for him, were not tinged with irony or subversion. Rather, he viewed these objects as an aspirational expression of Albert’s manliness, one that he related to and so created an attachment for. As a result, instead of seeing features of the “mancave” as superficial, like Georgia, Luke relates to its masculine connotations and feels attached to it for that reason.

With such divergent histories, interests, and personalities, these visitors came to ascribe oppositional meanings to the same details in the same room. While the space enriched their understanding of historical gender roles and associated performances, the house could be understood as a statement on the fluidity of history and identity, as much as an avenue for immersing oneself in dominant ideals of historic gendered expressions.

Connection and Tension: Engaging with Pride Month Tours

A third theme through which Spadina visitors developed a more complex understanding of history was queer and drag histories, introduced at the museum for Pride Month. For some participants, certain interpretive elements served as valuable supplementary resources for understanding queer history. Many visitors appreciated learning about Michelle DuBarry and other aspects of Canadian queer history, such as the story about queer athlete Bobbie Rosenfeld or the photographs of Toronto’s historic gay bars.

One visitor, Jane, a 34-year-old accountant of Chinese descent, born and raised in Toronto, had a particularly meaningful interaction with the drag histories presented at Spadina. Jane is a long-time fan of drag culture and shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. She came to Spadina specifically for the Pride tour after seeing a Toronto History Museums post on Instagram and learning that Michelle DuBarry was one of Canada’s most prominent drag queens. Before attending the tour, she conducted her own research to learn more about Michelle’s life and legacy. Her interaction with the tour was rich on multiple levels. First, it allowed Jane to closely engage with the artefacts belonging to a celebrity drag figure, something she had previously only encountered through television representation or during live drag shows. Jane explained that, “Maybe, I would see it on TV, or maybe I would see it on a person. But to see it displayed like an artifact.” While Jane acknowledged that the connection between Michelle’s story and Spadina’s usual narrative about the Austins was not an obvious one, it still felt organic and meaningful. Jane saw Spadina’s decision to place Michelle DuBarry’s glamorous dresses in the conspicuously lavish Austin party room as an effort to rectify historical wrongs and marginalization of the queer community, “[Michelle] would have never been able to come into this house as they are, just as who they are. So it kind of felt like, even though they wouldn’t be able to, they are now, in a way.” Jane interpreted the inclusion of Michelle’s presence in Spadina’s storytelling as both an undoing and reimagining of history, an act that reintegrates those previously erased from space and memory into the public discourse.

On the other hand, some visitors expressed appreciation tinged with uncertainty, particularly regarding how the queer exhibit connected to Spadina’s central narrative. We categorized this type of response as productive confusion — a form of interpretive uncertainty that stimulated curiosity and a desire for deeper understanding. Genevieve, a 23-year-old actor and dancer, and her friend, Abby, an 18-year-old white, transmasculine high school graduate, came across the museum spontaneously while exploring the city. Both responded positively to the Pride Month exhibit and described the drag artifacts as informative and exciting. Yet, both found themselves unsure of how Michelle DuBarry’s story related to the rest of the house and felt that more context could have helped audiences fully grasp the exhibit’s relevance. Genevieve suggested that “there could have been more of a through line of connection. Like, ‘this is connected to this,’” while Abby remarked that without it, “it felt kind of like ‘for Pride Month, we’re doing this,’” rather than a fully integrated historical narrative. Despite this, they acknowledged the challenges of time and information overload during a single tour, and ultimately felt that the exhibit sparked curiosity, “It provides a good platform of what it is, and you want to further educate yourself and go about that.”

Some visitors, however, extended this confusion and felt that the exhibit did not belong in the space at all. D expressed polite but firm discomfort with the inclusion of drag history, “I understood why they wanted to integrate the whole queer movement into it, but I didn’t see how it correlated,” she explained. Even the physical placement of the gowns left her unsettled. She recalled being confused when seeing the dresses in the drawing room, expecting them to be part of the Austins’ wardrobe. While not overtly hostile, D’s expressed that Michelle’s addition felt, in her words, “subtly forced.” Overall, from the transcript emerged a range of responses to queer history as told through Spadina Museum, from deep appreciation to productive tension and confusion, to a more agonistic confusion. Nonetheless, a common thread was that the Museum’s Pride theme evoked some underlying interest in learning more about and connecting with the content.

The Subtle Undercurrents of Colonial Legacy

The theme of colonialism, and Canadian settler-colonialism in particular, was not discussed extensively during the tours and in interviews. However, there were notable moments when stories and perceptual encounters with specific objects prompted visitors to engage in deep and nuanced reflections on the ubiquity of colonialism, both in past and present. One such

moment occurred during the visit of Julia, who focused on the ethical implications of technology implementation. After seeing the ivory billiard ball in Albert’s billiard room and hearing the guide mention the colonial origins of many objects of Spadina’s artifacts, Julia was prompted to reflect on the unethical nature of colonial resource extraction, as well as her personal connection to it, “I’m pretty sure I grew up in a house with a piano that still had ivory keys,” Julia noted. Julia extended this reflection by drawing a connection to contemporary forms of neocolonial resource extraction through the lens of her professional expertise, “We’re looking at ivory, but I know that’s still what’s happening with the ores that are coming for our phones. And so for me, tying that material world together to these materials in this place is part of an ongoing pattern of extraction and colonization.” Through this encounter in Spadina, Julia not only became aware of her own positionality within past systems of colonial extraction but also grasped the present pervasive continuities of colonialism.

Epistemic Disruption: Reflecting on Museums as Knowledge Producers

Charlotte’s acknowledgement of museums as a tourist’s “connection to what has previously been” encapsulates how Spadina Museum operates as a space where the past and the present converge to provide a transformative tourist experience to its visitors. Her reflection,

shaped by a deep emotional response to the preserved architecture, personal stories and historical artifacts of the museum, offers a reminder that historical awareness is not merely about information, but is deeply rooted in a unique tourist gaze that shapes one’s understanding of our present. For each tourist, the museum plays a significant role in helping visitors contextualize the present through a meaningful engagement with the past. Across visitor groups, participants described how exposure to domestic spaces, working-class narratives or underrepresented identities influenced their awareness of historical inequalities and cultural change. Museums are not neutral or static institutions, but serve as actively transformational and interactive spaces that influence how people relate to history, community and identity. We found that Spadina Museum encouraged visitors to critically recognize these historical nuances and engage with history in ways that are both personal and socially relevant.

Conclusion

Our ethnographic research into how visitors experienced the Spadina Museum during a time of transformation revealed how each visitor’s tourist gaze was shaped by the dynamic interaction between their personal histories and the museum’s storytelling. Spadina Museum’s new curatorial directions towards decolonial, anti-racist, and queer-inclusive practices are deeply shaped by visitor positionality, prior knowledge, and the site’s own interpretive scaffolding. And, because Spadina took steps to complicate the tourist’s gaze (Urry 2002), visitors were invited to read history “against the grain” (Watson, Barnes and Bunning 2019, 105). They did not passively consume content but actively negotiated, questioned, or contested the narratives presented. Such efforts align especially with the third goal of Toronto History Museums’ (2020) Strategic Plan, “sharing relevant stories from multiple perspectives to support an equitable society.” Importantly, Spadina does not pretend to be a politically neutral site focused solely on the aesthetics of domesticity, to echo Potter (2022), Christensen (2011), and Bennet (2020). While this transformation is ongoing, the Museum has shown to be on the path toward a more inclusive and reflexive curatorial space, as it addresses issues of gender, race, and sexuality in nuanced ways.

While Christensen (2011) critiques house museums for taking decorative objects at face value and stripping them of their ideological and social meanings, Spadina complicates this argument. The building’s material aspects communicated not just beauty but structural privilege, especially the trap door and the third floor, where visitors were struck by the marginalization and dispensability of servants’ lives. These moments thus disrupted romanticized narratives of the home and invited what Christensen (2011) might consider a corrective — reading beyond objects’ surface beauty to expose their embedded ideologies.

Our research was significant in that historical house museums and other heritage sites have yet to be meaningfully integrated into dominant decolonization discourses in anthropology. Through delving deeply into visitors’ unique perspectives, we believe the museum’s transformational efforts were effective in situating Spadina as a “contact zone” for reflection. The Museum’s layered stories—of class disparity, queer identity, race, and gender expression— provoked both appreciation and confusion, resistance and recognition. Discussions with visitors proved it to be a valuable site for dialogue, critical inquiry, complicating history, diversifying storytelling, and decolonizing narratives. Finally, while it is important to note that Spadina’s efforts are not without limits, its curatorial strategies actively resisted the simplification of history and fostered emotional, critical engagement. Ultimately, our research affirms that museums are not passive repositories of history, but active sites of cultural negotiation — where the stories told, and the silences left intact, continue to shape the public’s relationship to the past and to each other.

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